With the ever concerning topic of territorial claims between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes of BCC has covered an exclusive video of his exploration to the disputed Spratly’s Island to find out the situation that is currently happening in the most talked about issue on the land.
“What I came across on a reef far out in the middle of the South China Sea has left me shocked and confused.” Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in an article published in BCC.com.
Hayes was been told that China was deliberately destroying and constructing new islands in the said disputed territory, but he was not convinced until he had the chance to interview a Filipino mayor on the island of Palawan.
“It goes on day and night, month after month…I think it is deliberate. It is like they are punishing us by destroying our reefs,” the mayor said.
Still, Hayes was not convinced because he thought that it was just an anti-Chinese bile coming from a Politician in the Philippines. But then, as their aircraft descends towards the disputed area, he was shocked at what he saw. A dozen of boats anchored on a nearby reef and long plumes of sand and gravel were trailing behind them.
“That’s what the mayor was talking about, that’s the reef mining!” he said to his cameraman Jiro.
As a Filipino boatman guided the team leading to the Chinese poachers, they were even shocked of what they have discovered.
“What are they doing?” Hayes asked the boatman.
“They are using their propellers to break the reef,” the boatman responded.
He was sceptical so he decided to take a little closer. “The result was clear, though. Complete devastation,” he stated.
“This place had once been a rich coral ecosystem. Now the sea floor was covered with a thick layer of debris, millions of smashed fragments of coral, white and dead like bits of bone”, he continued.
He even asked why fishermen and poachers would destroy a whole coral system as what he had witnessed.
“I still found it hard to understand why these Chinese fishermen, who have a long tradition of fishing on these reefs, are now destroying them,” he stated in his article.
“Greed may be one answer. In newly wealthy China there is far more money to be made from looting and trading in endangered species than in catching fish.”
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